


Starting Line

by SwapsWrites (Pyropesy)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Family, Found Family, Gen, Heart's Home Zine, Identity Issues, Introspection, Moving On, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Love, Team as Family, Trauma, a pinch of Protective Church
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:53:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24122407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyropesy/pseuds/SwapsWrites
Summary: It’s the slow kind of fall that haunts her, Church knows. The kind that takes years before you even notice the downwards plummet.Carolina's dreams are never peaceful. Church watches, and wonders if they'll ever be able to leave this damage behind.
Relationships: Agent Carolina & AI Program Epsilon | Leonard Church
Kudos: 18





	Starting Line

**Author's Note:**

> First work for a different fandom! I *love* Red vs. Blue, and the Church sibs are and will likely always be my favourite characters.  
> This was written for the RvB found-family themed zine, [Heart's Home](https://rvb-foundfamilyzine.tumblr.com/). Go check out all the other awesome participants at the link!! 
> 
> Find me on tumblr [@artswaps](https://artswaps.tumblr.com/)

Nights like this are what make Church glad he doesn’t dream. 

The distressed furrow of Carolina’s forehead demands his attention far more than the movie she’d fallen asleep watching, her face pinched and pale under the washed-out glow of the screen. From his hologram’s perch on the back of the couch, Church tracks her vitals and knows she’s dreaming of falling. 

He doesn’t wake her up. That leads to defensiveness, and he knows better by now. Instead he watches, and he waits, and he tries to smooth the flux in his code that betrays concern

It’s the slow kind of fall that haunts her, Church knows. The kind that takes years, that boils over into inevitable impact before you even notice the downwards plummet; leaves you crawling from the crater, jarred permanently out-of-step with the person you thought you were. Shadowing far behind the one you were trying to become. 

Carolina's tired a lot, lately.

The shitty rom-com they’d chosen for movie night cushions the silence, a drone of muffled noise he’d long since filtered out. Neither of them were interested in it to begin with, but the point had been to relax. For Carolina, _specifically_ , to relax. Dumb idea, useless endeavour, but- hell, she really needed a break. 

Around the others, she never lets it show beyond her bristling temper just how much the sleepless nights weigh on her. How whatever snatches of sleep she does manage are built like an echo-chamber ringing of past mistakes, of regrets she can’t shake no matter how far forward she moves. 

Still, she dreams, and _it doesn’t have to be this way; come with me_ plays in a taunting loop while Agent Maine’s hand is being puppeted in a vice grip around her throat, and she struggles and kicks her feet but can’t ever catch up, ever be _good enough_ , _better luck next time, Carolina,_ before falling, always _falling_ -

She can’t hide it from Epsilon like she can the others. _They_ don’t hang out in her implants, picking up on the ripples like radio feedback. 

On duty, he sees the way the exhaustion slows her reaction times. And Carolina is too proud and too _capable_ to let it get in the way of their objectives but he knows she feels the drag too, knows she’s always hyper-aware of where she falls short of perfection. He knows it frustrates her, knows there’s a burn to push harder until she feels in control of herself again. 

And he knows she’s terrified of that burning, of reverting back to that relentless drive for success that dogged her heels for years, left her so blindsided by trying to prove herself that she couldn’t see the red flags, didn’t notice wrongdoings for what they were until she stood seemingly alone in the wreckage Project Freelancer left behind.

Church can relate, in some ways. And where he can’t, he can at least _understand._

He understands trying to find yourself again in the carnage the past has made of you; trying to prove to yourself that you’re not who you were, that you’re _better._ Freelancer clings to Carolina like Blood Gulch shadows over Church.

Epsilon has never _been_ to Blood Gulch. Half his memories aren’t his own, and sometimes he gets lost between the lines of what’s his, and what are half-reconstructed echoes of Alpha’s mind. The two lines of data bleed into each other in a dizzying duality, and sometimes the only way to make the distinction is to follow through the networked paths of recollection until he stumbles over contradictions, each with their own set of existential headaches that make him glitch all over.

Like how he remembers the heat of the desert, relentless and tiring. The way his palms blistered under the sun-scorched metal of his rifle if he wasn’t careful cleaning it. The daily, mind-numbing tug of war between two teams stranded with a whole lotta dead air and nothing better to do except stand around talking or taking cheap pot-shots at one another. 

He remembers it all, but he knows it’s not _him_ he’s remembering, in that canyon, in that time. He doesn’t feel the heat, never has. He doesn’t have nerve-endings, or skin that can burn, or hands to heft the weight of a gun. He’s never been stuck in a stalemate with a bunch of Red losers, because he woke up after it had finally broken.

The others- Caboose and Tucker, fuck, even the Reds- they’re complete morons, and they annoy him to the point of wanting to put a gun to his own damn hardrive, and he owes them _everything_ , and he needs them all to be safe. But he doesn’t have years of dull, uncomplicated history with them- even if his stupid databanks sometimes tell him they do- and sometimes he’s kind of terrified that they’ve forgotten that. Forgotten that he’s not _their_ Church, the one who died in denial and who never had to _remember._

And he doesn’t _want_ to care about how much that makes him feel like an imposter when he’s around them, but. Well.

Carolina never knew the Alpha, and that makes it easier. To her, he’s only ever been the one version of himself. The worst version, perhaps, but he’s seen the worst of her too; hardened and untrusting, the fight still sticking to her, white-hot anger fueling the pyre she was burning herself on. Demanding _no, we’re not done yet,_ while dragging him back from the brink of _I forget you,_ of letting go.

They’d fought so hard to make it back to that point again- to _letting go._ It helps, being able to recognise the broken pieces in each other left by the aftermath of all that was done to them. Knowing that they’re both rebuilding, in different ways, but at the same time.

He sees it coming before it happens- elevated blood pressure, heart-rate a rapid staccato spilling warnings across his sensors- something halfway to a scream splinters the quiet as she startles abruptly upwards, a noise torn from the depths of whatever memory she’d been trapped in. Church is flickering back into view at her side in an instant. 

Waking is always a violent process.

Carolina clutches the couch cushions like they’re salvation, a ledge above a downwards drop. She’s folded over herself, choking on sharp, heaved breaths, and when her eyes glance sideways at his flash of blue they’re wild and unfocused.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty,” he says, more jovial than he feels and quieter than what he’s used to. Trying to tether her somewhere away from the look of glazed panic on her face. “For the record, we’re _not_ rewinding. No way am I sitting through that sappy bullshit again just ‘cos you can’t stay awake.”

Carolina pushes herself upright, her breathing ragged. Tips her head back on the cushions with eyes pressed shut, clenches trembling hands into fists. She senses his continued hovering and grinds out, “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t reply, just lets her come back to herself. Watches her pull in shaking breaths until the adrenaline bleeds out of her, her heart rate eventually settling down to something less terrifying. Her hands still shake when she brings one up to wipe tiredly over her face, and Church can’t help the way it spills out of him before he can catch it, layered with quiet concern-

“Easy, sis,” he says.

It’s unceremonious, rolling with the ease of an absent-minded truth. Epsilon knows with a flash of embarrassed dismay that she’d heard; the moniker rings loud and clear in the snatches of silence between her shaky breaths. 

He only has a second to feel his light dim in sheepishness before Carolina’s shaky smile puts him at ease, and the moment passes.

There’s this… _thing,_ that sits between them. They don’t talk about it openly, that’s not the kind of people they are. But it hasn’t gone unnoticed, or unvalued, how easy it is to sit in each others’ company feeling emboldened by the familiarity they’ve forged there; pretending they’re different people than the bitter, fragmenting scraps the Director spit out when the reality is that they’ve just _changed._ Found a steadying foothold in one another where they can stop teetering on the edge of their guilt and doubt, and instead move forward. 

_Sis._

He feels confident in that, in the rightness of it. It fits seamlessly into their understanding of one another, cuts through the chaos of all they’ve been through and shapes it into something unified. Something theirs.

Epsilon doesn’t know who he is, not yet. There’s not much to orient himself around beyond _Blood Gulch_ and _Allison_ and a handful of other things that aren’t his and never have been. But working alongside Carolina, tying up Freelancer’s loose ends- that feels like a good place to start figuring it out.

He rewinds the movie after all, but it doesn’t matter; Carolina falls asleep again before long. This time, the past leaves her alone. She sleeps peacefully. 

It’s a start.

**Author's Note:**

> (Is it technically found-family if he's an AI based off your dead dad??? The answer is Fight Me.)
> 
> Church doesn't really reach canon-typical asshole levels here, but um.... artistic liberties?? Listen, I know he's not this sappy, but I needed him to carry a compelling inner-monologue for 1.5k words, so there.
> 
> Once again hmu on tumblr [@artswaps](https://artswaps.tumblr.com/) where I rant about a lot of things that I like.


End file.
